Category Archives: Blogosphere

religious people need to recommit to and engage with critical thinking

By bananabrain | Published: August 23, 2010
following an unusually thoughtful broadcast last week by richard dawkins (he’s obviously trying to take on board how much his militancy turns people off by some of the pleas he made on behalf of sacred texts as fine language, cultural literacy and so on) i am grappling again with some of the issues raised by [...]
Also posted in Anti Muslim bigotry, Antisemitism, Christian Evangelical Nutters, Democracy, Exegesis, Freedom of Expression, Freedom of Religion, Hate Speech, Hermeneutics, Human Rights, Interfaith, Islamism, Jewish Extremism | 16 Comments

Is this the “counter-Enlightenment”?

By bananabrain | Published: August 6, 2010
i’ve not posted for a while, mostly because of pressure of work, but there are a number of things which are currently causing me to more or less lose sleep. recently, i gave up posting on pickled politics, partly because of the level of personal animosity i was facing, but mostly just in frustration at my [...]
Also posted in Anti Fascism, Anti Muslim bigotry, Antisemitism, Christian Evangelical Nutters, Civil Rights, Democracy, Entryism, European Fascism, Freedom of Expression, Freedom of Religion, Human Rights, Identity Politics, Interfaith, Islamism, Jewish Extremism, Moral relativism, Multiculturalism, Obscurantism, Sectarianism, Secularism, The Far Left, The Regressive Left, UK Politics | 37 Comments

religious idiots round up: vengeful volcanoes

By bananabrain | Published: May 12, 2010
of course, nobody should be surprised that when a natural disaster occurs, the usual suspects jump on the bandwagon to explain why it proves their wacky theologies and that G!D Is Having a good old Smite at people of whom they disapprove or, alternatively, that it’s all part of the dastardly plans of the illuminati [...]
Also posted in Anti Muslim bigotry, Antisemitism, Environmental, Esoterica, Farce, International Affairs, Israel/Palestine, Media, Misc, Obscurantism | Leave a comment

G!D the “misogynist” and other cyclical lepidopterisms

By bananabrain | Published: May 6, 2010
thanks to the delightful sonia from pickled politics, i ended up in a jolly discussion over at butterflies and wheels on feminism and religion. they seem to have closed the comments for some reason, but i still thought it was an interesting subject and thought i’d continue it here if anyone (like ophelia benson or [...]
Also posted in Esoterica, Ethics, Exegesis, Feminism, Hermeneutics, Human Rights, Interfaith, Jewish Extremism, Moral relativism, Obscurantism, Secularism | 8 Comments

Facebook Jerks

By Faisal | Published: December 7, 2009
Another costly study to confirm the bleeding obvious: Psychologist Sam Gosling analyzed the Facebook profiles of 236 college-aged people, who were also asked to fill out personality questionnaires. The study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science, included surveys that were designed to assess not only how study participants viewed [...]
Posted in Blogosphere | Leave a comment

enter sandmonkey – again!

By bananabrain | Published: October 14, 2009
i don’t know about the rest of you, but i was an avid reader of the sandmonkey blog written in cairo and was extremely upset when he got hounded out of the country by the security forces – but hurrah! it seems that it didn’t take much time for him to get back on the [...]
Also posted in Activism, Democracy, Freedom of Expression, Human Rights, Politics | 1 Comment

Yusuf Smith: Renouncing Islam Is Inexcusable

By Guest | Published: September 17, 2009
This is a guest post by Al-Qanaas Al-Masri **** Yusuf Smith, a white convert to Islam who runs the popular blogistan website under the pseudonym of ‘Indigo Jo’, wrote an extraordinary blog last week in which he states that converts to Islam who then renounce Islam have ‘no excuse’. Writing about some western Muslim women who recently left Islam [...]
Also posted in Obscurantism | 52 Comments

Bob and Bungle – Forget the BNP, let’s attack Quilliam

By Yossarian | Published: August 20, 2009
This morning I turned on my computer and was immediately confronted by a bizarre article from Bob Pitt of Islamophobia Watch. Quilliam accuses anti-BNP protestors of ‘thuggery and hooliganism’ is an amateurish bit of slime aimed at Lucy James (who has kindly written one guest post for the Spittoon in the past) for comments she [...]
Also posted in Anti Fascism, Defamation, The Far Left, UK Politics | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

We are all Neocons now!

By Guest | Published: August 10, 2009
This is a guest post by The Arabian Neocon and is part 1 of a 2 part report. ****************** Where to begin with all this? While I unravel the issues here I implore you, gentle reader, to persevere. It gets good. Trust me. Muhammad Idrees Ahmad is a snotty paranoiac doing a PhD at the University of Strathclyde. [...]
Also posted in Antisemitism, Israel/Palestine, Politics, UK Politics, Your View | 111 Comments

Bunglawala, he’s not Bright!

By Shikwa | Published: July 19, 2009
Earlier this week, Inayat “Mr Bean” Bunglawala’s Engage wrote a characteristically stupid piece libelling Martin Bright under the headline: “Veteran Islamophobe Martin Bright criticises MCB libel win”. Martin was rightly upset with that slur observing: “I object in the strongest terms to the way the insult  “Islamophobe” is thrown around so casually. It is essentially a charge [...]
Also posted in Defamation, Freedom of Expression | Leave a comment